Topic: Biographies
John Williams (b. 1937) and Scott Williams (b. 1958) are the father-son team behind Kiona Vineyards, the pioneer winery on Red Mountain, near Benton City. John was a Hanford engineer in 1972 when he a...
Roberta Lynn Williams was one of the most influential personal-computer-game designers of the 1980s and 1990s, becoming known as the "Mother" and "Queen" of video adventure games. Williams began her c...
W. Walter Williams led the Seattle-based Continental Mortgage for nearly half a century, guiding the business from modest beginnings in the University District to its ranking as one of the top mortgag...
Walter B. Williams, son of W. Walter Williams (1894-1983), not only assumed leadership of Seattle's Continental Mortgage from his father, continuing to grow and strengthen the firm through the 1990s, ...
Over the course of his lifetime, much of it spent on the water, Joe D. Williamson (1909-1994) documented a wide swath of Northwest history with his camera, yet he did not consider photography his prim...
A Willits canoe, considered one of the finest canoes ever made, was the life's work of the Willits brothers: Earl Carmi (1889-1967) and Floyd Calvin (1892-1962). Born in the Midwest, they arrived in t...
August Wilson was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who lived the final 15 years of his life in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. His 10-play cycle of dramas covered each decade of ...
George Wilson played football at the University of Washington from 1923 to 1925. He ran, passed, caught passes, punted, and played linebacker on defense, a 60-minute player. In 1925 his teammates sele...
T. A. Wilson, known to many simply as "T," was a small-town boy from the Midwest who eventually became president and CEO of The Boeing Company in Seattle. Although his tenure at the company's helm beg...
Jesse Wineberry served five terms in the Washington State House of Representatives from 1985 to 1995. He was first elected at age 29 while still attending law school. He later became the state's first...
Describing herself as a moderate Democrat, a social liberal, and a practical feminist, R. Lorraine Wojahn of Tacoma was a powerful Washington state legislator for 32 years. She served in the House of ...
No one better deserves the title "leading citizen" than newspaperman Fred L. Wolf (1877-1957) of Newport, county seat of Pend Oreille County. From the time of his purchase of the Newport Miner in 190...
Hazel Wolf was an environmental and social activist whose causes ranged from the rights of workers, women, and minorities to the protection of wilderness, wetlands, and wildlife. She was still a young...
Wade Wolfe (b. 1949) is a pioneer viticulturalist and winemaker who played a key role in developing vineyard strategies suited to Washington’s unique growing conditions. Widely known as "Dr. Wol...
Tobias Wolff is a writer and novelist best known for his memoir This Boy's Life, which tells the story of Wolff's adolescence in 1950s Washington State. Thirty years after its 1989 publication, The&nb...
William D. Wood, an attorney, land speculator, electric trolley line president, and Seattle mayor, was a conspicuous figure in the business and political life of Seattle for more than a quarter centur...
Longtime owner, editor, and publisher of the Wenatchee Daily World and a major instigator of the Grand Coulee Dam, Rufus Woods was a titan of twentieth-century Pacific Northwest development. He was th...
William P. Woods was a civil engineer who worked his way up from pipefitter's helper to corporate leader in the natural gas industry. A native of Selma, Alabama, he was named president of the Washingt...
In this People's History Gerald Elfendahl of Bainbridge Island remembers the Bainbridge Island journalist and defender of human rights Walter C. Woodward Jr. (1910-2001). Woodward was an exemplary jou...
Philip A. Woolley was a railroad developer from Elgin, Illinois, who moved to Washington just as the territory became a state in 1889. With the help of Territorial Attorney General James Bard Metcalfe...
Bagley Wright was a Seattle philanthropist, businessman, and civic leader. Wright's deft business skills, strongly held artistic preferences, deep financial means, and equally deep commitment to his c...
Pastor Patrinell "Pat" Staten Wright is a Seattle treasure -- as a sublime vocal soloist, as the founding director of the Total Experience Gospel Choir, and as a long-time youth mentor and active comm...
Vim Wright, as she preferred to be called, saw a lot in her 76 years. From an impoverished childhood in Istanbul, to society life in Baltimore with adoptive parents, to eventually becoming a primary p...
Virginia Wright was an iconic figure in Seattle's art community – a collector, educator, gallerist, curator, fundraiser, supporter, and founder of the Virginia Wright Fund, which championed...